


If There's No You

by infinitestarsintheskye



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, FZZT au, I'm Sorry, I'm so sorry, Role Reversal, but oh my god the angst, the pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25689697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitestarsintheskye/pseuds/infinitestarsintheskye
Summary: Who am I supposed to talk to? What am I supposed to do, if there’s no you?An FZZT Role Reversal AUFitz gets the alien virus, not Simmons. They both come to some realisations.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53
Collections: AOS AU August 2020





	If There's No You

**Author's Note:**

> Cause there just isn’t enough canonical FitzSimmons angst idk. But in all seriousness I’m so sorry. I really truly hate my brain for coming up with this idea, and I’m sorry for subjecting you to it. I will not sugarcoat it this is PURE ANGST, but with a cute ending because whilst I am a MONSTER for even thinking of this I’m not a complete monster. I would say enjoy like I normally do, but both you and I know what you’re signing up for here. Title taken from Taylor Swift’s song Soon You’ll Get Better bc apparently I just enjoy pain.

_Who am I supposed to talk to, what am I supposed to do, if there’s no you?_  
  
Coulson sighed as he made his way down to the mobile lab. He’d take anything at this point. Any small piece of progress. He couldn’t do what happened in the Fire Station again. He just couldn’t. He’d been hoping to see Simmons dotting about the lab, finding answers, but instead he was greeted with the sight of Fitz carefully making his way around the lab, clearly trying to avoid any of the bodily fluid or samples that Simmons had left behind her.   
  
“Fitz.”  
  
He span around at the sound of his name.   
  
“Where’s Simmons? I was hoping for an update on the virus.”   
  
“Right well, I think she just nipped up to make a cup of tea, and I just took the opportunity of getting something done whilst she’s not dissecting something. She should be back down in a minute.” Fitz visibly shuddered.   
  
“Did she mention anything before she left? Has she found anything?” Coulson asked, trying not to sound frustrated.   
  
“She did actually! She was blathering on about how the virus doesn’t pass normally and that it passes by electric shock rather than you know, the normal way. She was so excited sir, you should have seen her face.” Fitz grinned.   
  
He didn’t notice Coulson’s face falling, didn’t notice him slowly backing out of the lab and hitting the quarantine button. Fitz looked up as the doors slammed shut, and the loud, blaring alarm went off.   
  
“Sir?”  
  
“Fitz, I’m so sorry.” Coulson uttered.   
  
Fitz turned and saw one of his tools floating up behind him. His stomach seemed to fall out of his body and out of the plane itself, free-falling down, down and out of sight. He was going to die.   
  
Everything seemed to go rather quickly after that. Simmons had returned, tea mug wrapped in her hands and Fitz watched as it tipped out and crashed to the floor as Coulson told her the news. For a moment she was silent, a look of utter devastation struck across her face. What followed made Fitz smile.  
  
“LET ME INTO THE LAB I CAN HELP HIM!!” She shouted at Coulson for the hundredth time.   
  
“Jemma the risk is too high, I cannot let you go in there.” Coulson had reasoned yet again.   
  
“Sir, he must have been infected about thirty-six hours ago, when we were examining Adam Cross’s body. If my estimates are correct, we have two hours left. I can help him. Please.” She pleaded.   
  
Coulson looked from Fitz, who was sat on a stool, looking terrified, to Simmons, wearing the most determined look on her face.   
  
“Fine.” He sighed.  
  
“But you do not come out of there until you have a cure, you understand me? You will go in; in every single piece of protective equipment we have on board. And even then, don’t touch him, no matter what.”   
  
Jemma’s face lit up.   
  
“Of course, sir.” She said.   
  
“Fitz, I need you to make a delivery mechanism, something that can suspend the vaccine and conduct electricity.” Simmons reeled before running to the nearest storage unit and chucking on every single protective piece of clothing she could find.  
  
She bolted back to find Fitz gathering tools and things he needed. Slamming the button to open the lab doors, Simmons all but ran in and began darting around the lab collecting equipment and muttering to herself. Her hands shook as she worked, but she tried not to show her stress on her face. Fitz couldn’t die, he just couldn’t. She didn’t know who she was without him. How could she live without him, who would she watch Doctor Who with, who would she bicker with and plan and experiment with. Who would listen to all of her ideas and thoughts at all hours of the day? Who was she supposed to spend her life with? That last thought stopped her in her tracks. Her brain had been reeling off all of these what if’s and that had just popped up unawares. She turned, her eyes fixing on Fitz, who was currently bent over, adding the final touches to his delivery mechanism, and suddenly the world seemed to make sense, like the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle had just slotted into place. Her hands seemed to shake more at the revelation. She couldn’t lose him. She just, she couldn’t.   
  
“There, the perfect delivery mechanism!” Fitz exclaimed a moment later, trying to hide the shake in his voice as he held up the small device.   
  
“Fast and efficient! Though it wasn’t easy to find a mineralised solution that could suspend the vaccine and conduct electricity.”   
  
Simmons gave a small smile. Of course Fitz would still be bragging when he was dying. It was one of the many qualities that she loved about him. Her stomach seemed to drop at the thought, and her head seemed to buzz, stress coursing through her veins.   
  
“I-I wish you wouldn’t use the word vaccine. It’s really more of an anti-serum.” She worried, pacing over to him, plucking the device out of his waiting hand.  
  
She’d managed, she couldn’t tell you how, to come up with an anti-serum that she hoped would work. Trying to keep her hands steady, she loaded it into Fitz’s delivery mechanism, and made her way to the poor awaiting lab rats. Looking down at the poor little thing, she let out a small, almost inaudible whisper of ‘please’. It was as close to a prayer as she was willing to get. She felt Fitz at her shoulder, and she relaxed slightly. His presence had had this effect on her for so long she’s stopped noticing it.   
  
“Now, these antibodies should be able to target the virus’s antigens.” She said matter-of-factly, dipping her hand into the cage to pick up the little white rat.   
  
She couldn’t look at him.   
  
“If this bloody alien virus even has antigens.” She murmured, giving the rat a shock, stepping back and holding her breath.   
  
It felt like an eternity.   
  
“Come on. Come on now.” She whispered.   
  
It had to work. It had to. Fitz couldn’t die. She would not let him. The flash of blue light seemed to send ripples through her body. Simmons felt sick. It hadn’t worked. He was going to die. She felt Fitz stiffen behind her. He knew it too. No. Fitz was not going to die, not if she could help it. Placing the delivery mechanism down, she rushed past Fitz and began again. This time it would work. This time. It had to. She would not lose him. She glanced at her watch, jumping up at she heard another tool clatter to the floor behind Fitz.   
  
“It’s all right, everything is going to be fine.” She assured, not sure if she was speaking to herself or to Fitz.  
  
“Stop it Jemma. I see you looking at your watch.” He snapped.   
  
He worried his face in his hands.  
  
“Are you sure you don’t want any help; I feel useless and it’s my life.”   
  
Simmons knew he was trying, but she was just so stressed.   
  
“Are you sure this thing even works?” She snapped back, gesturing to his delivery mechanism.   
  
“Yes, it works. My device isn’t the issue it’s the vaccine.” He shot back.   
  
Fitz knew he was just saying that to make himself feel better. At least in part. He knew his machine worked; he just couldn’t bare feeling so helpless.   
  
“Antiserum!” Simmons shouted at him.  
  
“And all I’m wondering is if you’ve calibrated it correctly!”   
  
“Hey! Don’t put this all on me! I was doing fine tucked away in our lab until you dragged us onto this flying circus! We didn’t even pass our field assessments for god’s sake!” Fitz shouted in pure frustration.   
  
Simmons looked at him, as if she was about to both scream at him and burst into tears. He was right. It was her fault. If he died it was her fault. Her fault that she didn’t come up with a cure on time, her fault for not getting it to him quickly enough, her fault for dragging them both into the field in the first place. Her stress levels seemed to quadruple, and she couldn’t help the words that came out of her mouth next.   
  
“Don’t you dare act like these past few months haven’t been the highlight of your entire pasty life!” She shouted at him.  
  
It was self defence really. She hated that he was right. It was her fault.  
  
“Pasty?! Really?! When did you become so sun-kissed? Because I’m pretty sure that every minute of every day you’ve been stuck in a lab right beside me! At the Academy, at Sci-Ops, on this plane! You’ve been beside me the whole damn time!” He flung back at her.  
  
They were right at each other’s faces now. Fitz looked ill, so ill and Simmons couldn’t bare it. Silence fell over them, and for the first time in a long time, Simmons felt absolutely and utterly useless. She couldn’t help him and it was killing her.   
  
“We have to fix this.” Fitz said softly, breaking the silence.   
  
“I don’t know how Fitz.” Simmons sighed, resignation filling her voice.   
  
“The antibodies from the three firefighters aren’t strong enough to fight this virus. It’s born from alien DNA. There’s nobody to create an antiserum from.”   
  
She felt her voice break as she spoke. She didn’t even know how she was still looking at him. Fitz’s entire face was pale and clammy, dark circles wound round his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept in days. Her very gut wrenched at the sight. She couldn’t lose him. But she was going to.   
  
“Nobody has actual survived this except…”   
  
It was as if a lightbulb suddenly appeared over her head. She saw it in Fitz’s drawn face too. Realisation.  
  
The Chitauri.”  
  
They spoke simultaneously, and Simmons felt, for the first time in what felt like days, a sliver of hope.   
  
“The minky bastard who actually wore the helmet actually had the virus…” Fitz started.   
  
“And managed to survive without ever emmiting an electrostatic pulse because…”

“… it was immune.” Fitz finished.  
  
“Yes! She- she was just the carrier, like Typhoid Mary!” Simmons exclaimed, allowing the hope to permeate her voice.   
  
She could see the cogs turning in Fitz’s head, working at a mile a minute. It was one of the best expressions that he made, and she savoured it.   
  
“So uh- you don’t think-uhm, never mind. So if I can scrape some epithelial cells from the inside of the helmet we can create a vaccine?” He reeled.   
  
“Yes! A vaccine but yes!” Simmons explained.   
  
For a moment, they both beamed at each other, the answer was within their grasp. But then, simultaneously their faces fell.   
  
“There’s only one problem.” Fitz said sadly.  
  
“We’re both stuck in here.” Simmons added.   
  
“And the helmet is upstairs.”   
  
Fitz seemed to deflate. Before he could even begin to start to think of a solution, Simmons was storming towards the doors, shedding her protective equipment off as quickly as she could, and slamming the button to open the door.  
  
“JEMMA NO! YOU’VE BEEN HANDLING THE VIRUS, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT COULD HAPPEN!” Fitz bellowed after her.  
  
She was halfway up the spiral staircase before he knew it.   
  
“Fitz, it’s our last chance. I’d do anything.” She said, as thought it was perfectly obvious, before turning, and running faster than she ever had in her life, pure adrenaline pumping through her veins.  
  
Simmons ignored the shouts from the rest of the team as they saw her dart through the space, the crate with the helmet inside, clutched in her hands. It was like there was a loud buzzing in her ears and she couldn’t hear them. Every particle in her body, every single molecule was focused on one singular thing. Fitz. She made her way back to the lab, in what must have been record time, pressing the button to let herself back in and leaping over the pile of protective clothing she’d left behind.   
  
“Jemma, what are you doing?!” Fitz cried incredulously.  
  
“You can’t be in here like that, I don’t want you to get this!” He cried.  
  
“Just keep your hands off me then. I’m doing what we always do. We’re going to fix this together, okay. No arguments.” She quipped quickly, placing the crate on the ground, before hopping up to grab some gloves.   
  
She caught a glimpse of Fitz’s face as she leapt up. If at all possible, he looked worse, dishevelled, and pale, but the expression he wore was one of utter incredulity, and she suspected, awe. They had never worked so swiftly or so well together in the almost ten years that they had been working together. The perfect team, Simmons allowed herself to think fleetingly. They ignored the rest of the team pacing outside the lab doors, after they’d followed Simmons down after her theatrical dash through the plane. Skye was chewing the corner of her nail, and Coulson was pacing holes in the floor, his face inscrutable. And then, it was done. With shaking hands, Jemma loaded their antiserum into Fitz’s device and headed for the last remaining lab rat. She zapped the poor thing, whilst Fitz stood back, watching, his face neutral, but Simmons recognised the worried look in his eyes. The only thing they could do now, was wait. It felt like an eternity. But the little white rat stayed, perfectly fine.  
  
“We did it.” Simmons uttered, allowing herself to fully smile.  
  
She felt relief. Such utter relief. He wasn’t going to die. Her happiness was utterly shattered by a flash of bright blue light and the sight of the last rat floating inches above the bottom of its tank. It was over. Their two hours were nearly up and there was nothing else they could do. Not now. Simmons felt sick. She just stared at the rat, incredulously. It should have worked. Why didn’t it work?! She was about to feel angry, but then she looked up at Fitz. The resignation on his face broke her heart into a thousand, million little pieces.  
  
“No.” She uttered.  
  
“No.”   
  
“Jemma.”   
  
She heard Fitz’s voice say. Tears were filling up in her eyes and he’d become blurred, unfocused. She’d thought she’d known every single expression that Fitz’s face could make, every small twitch of his mouth, every glint in his eyes, but she’d never seen this one cross his face before, that of utter and overwhelming defeat.   
  
“Would you let my Mum know for me. I know Coulson should really be the one to do it, but she knows you, loves you really, and I think she’d take it better from you.”   
  
Fitz’s voice was filled with the most devastating resignation and it broke Simmons to hear it.   
  
“Please.” He begged quietly.   
  
Simmons could only nod, tears streaming down her face. He was going to die. She watched as he wandered over to Coulson, muttering something about protocol, and asking for a moment alone with her. In those few, precious moments, Simmons managed to collect herself, managing to wrench a new wave of determination from somewhere deep in her gut. There must have been something she missed, something, anything they could do to get the damn anti-serum to work. Fitz was not going to die, not on her watch and she would use every single second she had left fighting to keep him alive. She scrabbled over the bench again and began working, hardly knowing what she was doing.   
  
“We’ll run it again, the electrostatic pulse from the last rat seemed much less, so we’re making progress. I won’t let you die Fitz, you’re my best friend in the world.” She reeled, her hands flying over everything and anything in front of her.   
  
She felt Fitz behind her and it felt like fuel. To keep going. He was not going to die.   
  
“Yeah, and you’re more than that to me Jemma. And I couldn’t find the courage to tell you, so please let me show you.” Fitz’s voice came from behind her.   
  
Simmons barely had a second to process what he was saying. More than that? She began to whip her head around to look at him, barely got a glimpse of his face, pale, clammy, tear streaked, before she felt a sudden splitting, pain at the back of her neck, and everything went dark.   
  
When she came to a few seconds later, she was aware primarily of the dull ache at the back of her neck. She pushed herself groggily up and found herself face to face with the last lab rat. He twitched his little nose at her, and in her groggy state it took her a few seconds to realise what that meant. The rat was alive, the antiserum worked.   
  
“Hey, it worked!” She smiled.  
  
“The pulse just knocked you unconscious did it?” She cooed at the rat, who seemed less than interested.   
  
She turned her head and her stomach went from the short stab of glee, to utter horror in an instant. Fitz was standing with his back to her at the end of the open cargo ramp, the wind whipping through his hair.   
  
“Fitz.” She started, scrambling to her feet.   
  
“FITZ!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, pounding her fists on the lab doors.  
  
“FITZ, NO DON’T DON’T!” she screamed, pulling at the doors with all her might.  
  
He turned back to look at her. He looked so small. His eyes were red and glassy, stark against the paper white of his face.   
  
“NOOOOO FITZ NOOOOOOOOOO DON’T!!”   
  
Her screams had turned into begging, her hands unrelenting from the lab doors. It happened almost in slow motion. Fitz leaned back, and she watched him fall, flailing like a rag doll, out and into the open sky. Simmons felt sick.  
  
“FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!”  
  
She didn’t know how she was still screaming, her throat felt red raw. Somehow, she didn’t know how, but she managed to get the lab doors open. She had to get to him, had to get the antiserum to him. Rushing around the lab, she got the vial of antiserum attached to the delivery mechanism, tears falling down her face against her will. She bolted towards the doors, and managed to grab a parachute. Barely remembering how to even put it on from her oh so long ago field training class, Simmons grabbed at the straps and began to sling it over her shoulder. It was then that she heard a loud thud, and she practically sobbed when she looked up to see Ward. He tore the parachute out of her arms and she thrust the delivery mechanism at him.   
  
“The antiserum worked, but he jumped!” She sobbed at him.   
  
Ward just gave her a curt nod before taking the device from her and running full pelt out of the plane.   
  
The next few hours were some of the worst of Jemma’s entire life. They’d gotten confirmation from Ward that he’d caught Fitz, and that he was alive and well, if not a little shaken. It had taken two hours to get them out of the water and to dry land. Simmons was sure she was going to have no fingernails left by the time she saw Fitz again, and that was all she wanted in the world right now. To just see with her own two eyes that he was alive and safe. She couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said to her. That she was more than that. More than a friend. Her heart seemed to race every time the words flew through her head. She did her best to try and rationalise it, but as he had said it, Fitz thought he was going to die, that he was never going to see her again. Simmons put her head in her hands and tried to imagine a life where she didn’t spend her life by his side, and it was impossible. Fitz was a fixed and ever present constant in what she wanted her future to be. It wasn’t hard to add on a romantic element to their relationship in her minds eye. It warmed her heart to think of waking up next to him every morning, to think of kissing him softly, of starting their lives together, of their children. Simmons sucked in a sharp breath at this last thought. Unbidden by her, an image of a cottage she’d seen many years ago floated into her head. Yes, she thought, that would be the perfect place to build a life with Fitz. It almost seemed obvious that she loved him. How on earth could she have missed falling in love with him at some point over the past ten years? Why did it take a near death experience for her to realise?  
  
Simmons couldn’t help jiggling her leg as the hanger door slowly lowered. She began to run towards him before it had even fully lowered. The tears came regardless of her own permission as she wrapped Fitz in the biggest hug possible. He was real. He was here. He was alive. Eventually she pulled back and rained kisses all over his face.  
  
“You brave, stupid stupid man.” She sobbed in between kisses.   
  
Fitz didn’t say anything, but she felt the tears fall onto her shoulder and the way his hands held her tight, as though he were anchoring himself.  
  
“I’m sorry Jemma.” He whispered gently, loud enough for only her to hear.   
  
Simmons just held him close, and only let go when Coulson insisted, saying he needed to debrief both him and Ward. She came with them as far as the spiral staircase up to Coulson’s office, Fitz’s hand clutched tightly in her own, before being forced to separate from him again. Her heart wrenched as she watched him climb up that staircase. She did not want to be without him anymore. After pacing back and forth across the common area for a while, she decided it would be better to wait in her bunk. Throwing herself down onto the tiny bed, she realised just how exhausted she was. It had been rather a long day. Her head was far too busy for sleep however. She needed to talk to Fitz, find out what he’d really meant by his final words to her. She didn’t know what she would do if she was wrong. The sounds of footsteps and voices broke her out of her reverie, and she sat up suddenly. She listened patiently as Fitz bantered with Ward, as Skye wrapped him in an enormous hug and then suddenly he was at her door.   
  
“Hi.”  
  
His voice was quiet and tentative. Unsure. Simmons shifted over on her bed silently, making room for him. The door slid shut behind him and Fitz had barely sat himself down before Simmons launched herself at him again.   
  
“Don’t ever do that again.” She mumbled into his shoulder.  
  
“I won’t.” He replied softly, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands placed firmly on her back, holding her to him.  
  
“I was going to jump after you, you know.” Simmons said quietly after a few moments.  
  
Fitz pushed back and looked at her in the eyes, a mixture of awe and concern swimming across his face.  
  
“You what?!”   
  
Simmons couldn’t help but smile at the look on his face.   
  
“Yeah. I just had a problem with the straps and then Ward appeared out of nowhere. Probably for the best really, I was having a little trouble remembering what the field instructor had taught us back at the academy.” She smiled.  
  
Fitz let out a small chuckle.  
  
“Yeah, probably.”  
  
“Thank you.” He added quietly after a moment.

Fitz took her hand silently into his own, and gave it a squeeze. 

“You saved my life.”  
  
“No I didn’t, not really! It was Ward who-“ Simmons protested.  
  
“No. You made the antiserum. It was you working beside me in the lab, looking for a cure. Even when I thought all hope was lost you kept going. You’re the hero.” He interrupted.   
  
Simmons gaped at him for a second. Here was another look on Fitz’s face that she hadn’t noticed before and her heart leapt when she guessed what it meant. She took a shaky breath in. They couldn’t hold off this conversation forever.   
  
“Fitz, about what you said to me just before you knocked me out…” She started.  
  
Immediately Fitz went bright red and he pulled his hand away from hers. He seemed to retreat away from her, curl inwards.  
  
“I-I wasn’t thinking straight, and I-I, I mean I thought that was it, I never, not before today really, but- it was nothing. We don’t need to talk about it, I mean there is nothing to talk about.” He stammered.   
  
“Maybe there is.” Simmons smiled.  
  
Fitz gazed at her, incredulously. Her eyes searched his face, and her heart seemed to ache at the sight of him, staring at her like that, as if she was the world. Throwing every last bit of caution to the wind Simmons surged forward and captured his lips with her own. It was short and sweet, Fitz barely having time to respond. Simmons had barely pulled back for a second, before Fitz tugged her forward and into a far fiercer, far more passionate kiss. His arms wound around her waist, as her hands caressed his face, and wound their way into the curls at the nape of his neck. They broke apart, their foreheads resting against each other’s, their breaths heavy.  
  
“I love you so much Jemma.” Fitz breathed.  
  
“I love you too. Please don’t jump out of a plane again.” She replied.  
  
Fitz let out a breathy chuckle.   
  
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”  
  
They stayed like that for a while wrapped up in one another, until finally they fell asleep. The day had been long to say the least, and they both managed to find solace, to find peace in each other’s arms. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry. My brain is just a real sadist sometimes I swear.


End file.
